CHICAGO (AP) - An Illinois gubernatorial candidate's name was mistakenly listed as "Rich Whitey" instead of Rich Whitney on thousands of Chicago electronic-voting machines and will be corrected, elections officials said Thursday.Now the thing that makes this hilarious, is the fact that this actually happened in Chicago, Ill. It could have happened anywhere as an honest mistake I suppose. But it happened in the county with the largest black population per capita. Can you imagine the faces of black voters in particular after seeing the name "Rich Whitey" as a gubernatorial candidate? Yep, and he's running on the Green Party ticket? Green Party, get it?
Chicago elections board Chairman Langdon Neal said crews will work overtime to reprogram and retest 530 machines being used for early voting and an additional 4,200 destined for the Nov. 2 election. The mistake in the Green Party candidate's name appears on a review screen that allows voters to double-check their selections and not on the screen where the vote is registered. It also is not on paper ballots, Neal said.
He said the board became aware of the typo Wednesday and called Whitney's lawyer Thursday morning. But Green Party Chairman Phil Huckelberry said a party member found the mistake Tuesday and was brushed off by city election officials for a day.
"We don't have any idea what affect that has had on voters," Huckelberry said. "I think something needs to be done above and beyond what they're doing."
Not only has the mistake made Chicago a laughingstock, he said, but "our candidate ... has been tagged with a name that really isn't that nice." (source)
Now it's not like we've haven't voted for "Rich Whitey" before. Let's face it, with the rising cost of political campaigns, I seriously doubt we'll ever see a "Poor Whitey", or worse, a "Rich Negro" or "Po' Coon" on the ballot ever.
